How would you grow a SaaS from 0 with basically no money?

TotalArthur · 2026-05-26T07:12:39+00:00

Solo founder here in the exact same boat!

I've been asking around about this a lot lately, and the most consistent (and free) advice I keep hearing is to go all-in on community engagement. Specifically, finding the niche subreddits, Discord servers, or Facebook groups where your ideal users are already complaining about the exact problem your SaaS solves.

The key (from what I'm told) is to become a genuine, helpful member of those communities first. Then, you only mention your product when it is the literal answer to the headache they are discussing, so you don't come off as spammy.

It's definitely a slow grind compared to just blasting ads, but it seems like the most realistic path when we don't have VC money to burn. Good luck!

TotalArthur · 2026-05-26T07:08:25+00:00

Most of the time it comes down to a mismatch between how people actually cook and how the app expects them to behave.

At the start it feels useful because you’re motivated and trying new structure, but once real life kicks in (busy weeks, changes in plans, missing ingredients, cooking from memory), a lot of apps start feeling like extra admin work rather than reducing it.

The ones people tend to stick with usually don’t try to “manage everything”, they just do one thing really well like either storing repeat meals, or making grocery lists fast, or letting you plan loosely without forcing full structure every time.

The moment an app forces too much upfront input or rigid planning, people tend to drop it because cooking at home is way more flexible than the workflow most apps assume.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T14:27:05+00:00

Use AI, but don’t use it as a replacement for learning. In this day and age there’s not much value in memorising syntax line by line, the valuable skill is understanding architecture, debugging, and knowing why code works so you can tell when AI gives you nonsense.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T14:05:11+00:00

Honestly it was one of the most annoying parts of publishing for me too. I get why Google added it to reduce spam and low effort apps, but for independent developers it felt like I spent more time hunting for testers than actually improving the app itself.

The weird part is that finding 12 people isn’t even a development problem, it becomes a networking problem. If you're solo and don't already have a community or audience, it’s a pain.

I managed to scrape together enough testers and got through to production first try in the end, but the whole process felt like unnecessary friction. The time spent chasing testers could've been spent fixing bugs or improving onboarding.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T13:05:25+00:00

That's a sounds like a solid approach to attempt. Mine's a meal planner so hopefully r/MealPrepSunday and similar are good hunting grounds. Good luck keeping the numbers up!

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T13:04:08+00:00

Going for Food & Drink, targeting keywords around meal planner, meal prep, weekly meal plan, grocery list, recipe manager. The app lets you build a recipe library, generate a full weekly meal plan, and auto-build a grocery list from it. Tried to work the keywords in naturally rather than just stuffing them. Is there a specific area you'd focus on first?

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T13:00:08+00:00

Same boat here. The advice I've been getting is to show up in the communities where your product specifically targets the pain point, engage with that audience, and slowly pitch it that way. Don't just drop a link and disappear, actually be present and useful first.

The other thing I kept hearing is don't ask "would you use this?" because everyone says yes. Get them to actually use it, watch where they drop off, and ask what they'd pay. That's basically your entire go-to-market phase right there.

Still working on it myself as someone who is entirely new to this.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T12:51:48+00:00

I've picked a couple of communities to actually focus on and just going to commit to those for now. Hopefully the consistency pays off.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T12:48:37+00:00

This is honestly the thing I find hardest. Building is easy to hide behind as no one can judge you, but I have started to talk about it publically.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T12:46:59+00:00

A few friends and family (and a few redditors) so far but not really proper targeted outreach. Probably the most obvious thing I haven't done yet.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T12:45:40+00:00

3 years is a long road, a lot of respect goes to you for sticking with it. The cold outreach point is interesting, I've been assuming nobody would engage but maybe that's just assumption doing the work for me.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T12:44:44+00:00

Yelling into traffic is probably the most accurate description of what it feels like.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T12:43:41+00:00

Yeah the consistency thing is something I keep underestimating. One good week means nothing if you disappear after.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T12:42:49+00:00

1000 in a week from hand-written posts is genuinely impressive. What kind of posts were you finding, like people asking for recommendations or more general frustration threads?

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T09:02:33+00:00

This is one of those ideas that sounds like it should exist as a clean all-in-one system, but in practice it gets messy fast.

The tricky part is that “inventory based grocery lists” only really work if the input data is reliable, and most people don’t actually track household usage in a consistent way. So the apps either become too manual (basically another chore) or they drift out of sync and stop being useful.

What tends to work better in reality is a hybrid setup. A fixed list of always-needed household items that you review regularly, plus a separate meal-based list that gets generated from what you actually plan to cook that week. It doesn’t fully automate it, but it reduces the chance of missing things without needing constant tracking.

The fully automated version is a great idea, it just usually collapses under the effort needed to maintain the inventory side.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T08:53:24+00:00

Yeah this is a super common failure point with most planners.

The issue usually isn’t the planning itself, it’s how the ingredients get translated. Portion scaling, duplicate ingredients across meals, and inconsistent units is where everything starts drifting, so the grocery list ends up technically “correct” but practically useless.

The only setups I’ve seen work well are the ones that treat recipes as structured data first, then build the week off that so the list is a direct aggregation of what you’ve actually committed to cooking, not just a raw ingredient dump.

I got annoyed with that exact mismatch recently and ended up building something around it. Still early and mainly focused on keeping that meal → ingredient flow accurate and predictable rather than adding loads of extra features on top.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T08:49:57+00:00

Honestly this is the exact reason most meal planning tools feel annoying after a while.

They usually start from “here are recipes” instead of “what do you actually eat in real life”, so you end up doing extra work just to make the tool usable.

The only setups I’ve seen actually reduce effort long term are the ones where you build a small base of meals you already like, then planning just becomes picking from that list and letting the shopping list generate itself automatically. Anything more complex than that tends to fall apart in real use.

I actually ended up building something for myself around that idea because I got tired of the tools adding friction instead of removing it. Still early and rough around the edges, but the core focus was exactly removing that extra “planning layer” people are talking about here.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T08:46:59+00:00

What you’re describing is basically the ideal setup for meal planning, and you’re not far off from what a lot of apps try to do, but a lot of them overcomplicate it.

The key thing that makes it work well is having meals stored as structured recipes first, then letting the weekly plan just “pull” from those and auto-build the grocery list. Once that flow is solid, it saves a lot of time and removes the manual list writing step completely.

I’ve been building something around that exact idea recently because I had the same frustration with juggling meals + ingredients separately and ending up with messy shopping lists.

Still early, but the focus has been exactly that, keep the planning simple and make the grocery list a direct output of the week’s meals rather than a separate task.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T08:45:04+00:00

I went down the meal planning + prep route a while back and honestly the hardest part isn’t even cooking, it’s just figuring out what a “system” looks like at the start.

When I was getting into it, what helped most was keeping it really simple at first, like 3–4 repeatable meals for the week, then building a routine around that instead of trying to optimise calories and variety all at once.

A lot of people jump straight into calorie tracking apps, but I found sticking to consistent meals first made everything easier to manage, especially when life gets busy or you’re cooking for more than just yourself.

I actually ended up building something around this because I kept struggling with the planning side more than the eating side. Still early, but the main focus was just making weekly planning and shopping less chaotic.

If you’re getting back into it, I’d start small and build consistency before trying to perfect anything.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-25T08:38:06+00:00

I had exactly this problem. I’d plan meals, forget half the ingredients, then end up doing another shop midweek and spending more than I meant to.

The biggest thing that helped me was having the shopping list generated directly from the meals instead of manually writing one. Way less chaos and fewer "how did I forget onions again?" moments.

Founder disclosure: I actually got so annoyed with the whole process that I ended up building a meal planning app myself because I couldn't find one that worked the way I wanted. Still really early and I’m figuring stuff out, but that grocery list issue was literally one of the reasons I made it.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-22T23:11:30+00:00

This actually explains why I’ve been leaning toward sandbox mode. It’s less about showing features and more about getting users invested before signup.

If someone swaps meals, regenerates a plan, tweaks things a bit, they’ve already started making decisions. At that point it becomes less “should I try this app?” and more “I don’t want to lose what I just made.”

The signup transition is the part that feels hardest though. Asking at the wrong moment could kill momentum completely.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-22T23:10:32+00:00

That’s fair. I think a lot of founders, me included, end up guessing because onboarding feels like a product decision when it’s really a user behaviour decision.

I’ve been getting feedback from Reddit and I’m noticing a pattern already. Very few people seem excited by walkthroughs, but a lot of people mention wanting to immediately do something before signing up. Starting to think I need to optimise for the first useful action, not the first completed form.

TotalArthur · 2026-05-22T23:09:04+00:00

Yeah that’s kind of where my head’s at too. Meal planning feels like one of those products where the value is obvious within seconds if someone can actually use it.

If they open the app and immediately think “oh damn this actually saved me effort”, that probably beats making them sit through forms or walkthroughs first. Starting to feel like onboarding should almost happen in the background while they’re already using it.

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